


(you’re the only thing I know) like the back of my hand

by inlovewithimpossibility



Series: inlovewithimpossibility's Olicity Summer Sizzle 2019 Fics [10]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Olicity Summer Sizzle, Post-Crisis On Earth-X Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), Retrospective, mental health discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 08:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20111779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithimpossibility/pseuds/inlovewithimpossibility
Summary: The girl who wore that gold dress and had a bomb collar clasped around her neck is not the same one sat in front of him, she’s not even the woman who had needed his old hoodie as a lifeline last summer. This box… it’s a story of their path to each other but it’s also a story of the love of his life and how she came to be the woman before him.(an abstract interpretation of 'friends to lovers' set after the s6 crossover as Felicity is gearing up to move in with Oliver and William)





	(you’re the only thing I know) like the back of my hand

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, just as a heads up, this story contains discussion of panic attacks and the mental health of the characters involved so please read at your own discretion.   
This is more of an interpretation of 'friends to lovers' and I was planning on it being a lot fluffier when I set out but... this kinda happened.   
Hope you enjoy :)

Oliver lets himself into the loft after a long day at City Hall. William has texted him to let him know that he’s home safe with Raisa so Oliver decided to help Felicity as she packs up her things to bring over to their apartment.

He’s so excited that he now gets to call the love of his life his wife and that they’re in the process of turning the apartment he bought as quickly as he could over the summer into a home. There are a few boxes littered around the loft but because Felicity isn’t fully moving out, the main area doesn’t look too much different. She’s still struggling to find office space for her and Curtis’ start-up so it makes sense for them to keep the loft, which Thea paid for outright with Merlyn’s money, to fulfill that purpose.

“Felicity?” He calls and is unsurprised to hear her answering call from upstairs. It makes sense that she’s concentrated on her personal items, her clothes, and her shoes and the like. He makes his way up to join her but frowns as he walks into their old room and his wife is nowhere to be seen. All he can see is fabric of every color and variety everywhere that he looks. Every surface is covered in

“I’m here!” She calls in response to his inquiry of her name again and Oliver frowns until he spots her head, poking out from the edge of underneath the bed.

“Hi.” He comments, moving until he’s stood in front of her, looking down at her with an amused smirk.

“Any particular reason you’re under the bed?” He questions and she wriggles an arm around, holding up a singular boot in triumph.

“I knew it was under here!” She claims and Oliver laughs, taking the boot from her and placing it next to its match on the bed.

“Do you need a hand?” He questions and Felicity smiles, holding her arms up. Oliver chuckles and loops his arms under her armpits and gently lifts her up onto her feet.

“Hi.” She smiles at him and Oliver chuckles, tugging her close to cup her cheek and softly kiss her in a proper greeting.

“Hi.” He repeats as he pulls back, smiling as Felicity sighs, leaning her head against his chest. He rubs a hand over her back as he looks around at the astronomical mess. “You okay?”

“Why have I never been through this?” She asks, looking around at the copious dresses, skirts, blouses, and shoes that litter her bed and floor.

Oliver knows that she knows the answer to that question. Every other time she’s moved, it’s been a rush. When she relocated from her townhouse on the edge of the Glades to the apartment in the city three years ago, it had been a rush to get all of her stuff out of the crumbling building that had been hit by Slade’s mirakuru army. Then she’d left Starling behind with Oliver for their world trip and Ivy Town so moving into the loft had been a whirlwind of trying to locate all their things from the numerous places they had stored them and balance getting back into the swing of Green Arrow-ing as well as her new job as CEO at Palmer Tech. Since then, her clothes have sat in the wardrobe here at the loft, only being added to and added to as she’s purchased new things and really not thrown anything out. She lamented this last night when he suggested moving her personal items over today.

“Is there any organization to this or is it just a start wherever kind of game?” He questions as he looks around and Felicity huffs, brushing the loose hairs that have fallen out of her messy bun back. There’s something about her like this, hair thrown up without a care, dressed in yoga pants and one of his old sweatshirts, and her feet bare that’s just so endearing.

“Over there is definitely keep, that’s definitely donate. Then in the middle here is stuff I need to go through.” Felicity explains and as Oliver looks around the mess, he can kind of see three piles that correspond to her titles.

“Okay, well, I can box up definitely keep and definitely donate if you want to start going through the other stuff?” He poses and Felicity smiles, rising on her toes to kiss him softly. In her bare feet, she has to stretch considerably and Oliver smiles, bending to meet her halfway.

“Thank you.” She tells him and he waves her off, reaching for a box and heading towards her donate pile.

As they work, Oliver catches Felicity up on the events of his day and she tells him about the errands she was running, both for the two of them and Helix. He assures her that William is perfectly happy with staying with Raisa as long as Oliver upholds his promise of bringing home Big Belly when they head home that night.

“A boy after my own heart.” Felicity grins at that comment and Oliver chuckles, shaking his head as he finishes boxing up the donate pile. He knows when to pick and choose his battles when it comes to his family and healthy eating. Felicity and William are a nightmare when they both decide they want Big Belly, or pizza, or any kind of takeout really and Oliver often finds himself relenting. He’s quit whilst he’s ahead tonight and decides he’ll just throw a few more vegetables into William’s lunch tomorrow and into dinner tomorrow night.

He moves to the other side of the room and frowns at the sight of two piles, one much larger than the other.

“Babe, what do the piles over here mean?” He questions and Felicity looks up with a smile.

“Oh, those are things I want to keep for sentimental reasons so I figured they could go in a different box.” She explains and Oliver raises an eyebrow, moving over to the smaller pile with his curiosity seriously peaked.

He freezes immediately at what sits on top of the pile; a very familiar-looking gold, sparkling dress. Immediately memories of his cute IT girl and her resolve that she was not going to be involved in a mission that involved the murder of innocent people floods his brain. He bought her this dress, had wondered what she might look like in it, and had been completely blown away by the reality of it. Before that point, he had been utterly charmed by her, but it wasn’t until she had walked into that ballroom in this dress that Oliver had seriously thought of her as someone he’d like to be with. It would be almost a year until he allowed himself to admit just how in love with her he was but he’s always seen this dress as a starting point.

He gently lifts it and places it in his empty box before he looks back to the pile.

The next item is a yellow cardigan that Oliver frowns at for a moment, confused as to its significance until he turns it over. There, where Felicity’s shoulder will sit when she’s wearing it, is a hole which is still slightly discolored from obvious scrubbing and chemicals used to get stains out. This is the cardigan Felicity wore when she got her first scar, in the bank when they’d been taking down the Clock King. He remembers that night vividly, how scared he’d been when he rounded the corner to see Sara crouched over Felicity with a concerned expression on her face only to realize that she had indeed been shot. He can’t help the smile that spreads across his face as he thinks of how adorable she was after John slipped her his ‘aspirin’ and her head dropping into his hand as he told her that she would always be his girl. Four years later, that statement could not be any truer.

“I’m just going to check and see if there’s anything in the spare room.”

Oliver turns at the sound of Felicity’s voice. He’s been so tied up in memories that he honestly forgot that she was there.

“Okay.” He smiles in reply and she grins back, nodding as she heads out the door and around the corner.

He caresses his fingers over the hole the bullet made in the shoulder of the cardigan, just like he does every time he’s presented with the scar on her shoulder, before he folds it carefully once more and adds it into the box. Turning back to the pile, he freezes at the next item.

A dark grey leather moto jacket. Unlike the cardigan, he knows what this is the second he sees it. Nanda Parbat and their first time. Oliver remembers Felicity lamenting how tattered the jacket got a couple of years ago due to it being her go-to ‘mission’ jacket. It had always made him smile to see the way she dressed for missions, the things that she considered appropriate wear in the field. He’d been dubious at first but then he watched her take down an assailant in stilettos and one of her trench coats and he knew that her wedge heels and moto jackets weren’t even really necessary. His girl’s a badass.

This jacket though. The sight of her across the desert in that jacket, using her tablet of all things as a weapon, it had been almost impossible to remain under the cover of Al Sahim. That day she had reminded him exactly why he had fallen so deeply in love with her. The way she’d stood up to Ra’s Al Ghul, the leader of the deadliest organization on the planet, in order to bargain for his life. She hadn’t a flicker of fear in her eye and the fire that has always raged in her was so evident. Then she appeared in his bedchamber.

She’d slid that jacket off her shoulders in the candlelit room, her face illuminated by the flames, and Oliver had known that no matter how long he lived, he was never going to love another woman as much as he did this one. They’d come together in the most magical of ways and Oliver had been sure, even though he was running the risk of this being the last time he ever saw her, that the memory of that night would keep his spirit alive in the dark walls of Nanda Parbat.

The bright blue fabric of the sarong she bought in Thailand on their trip around the world is next up and Oliver smiles as his fingers caress the soft material. This had adorned Felicity’s body for so many night time walks along the beach and morning breakfasts on the balcony or the deck of where they were staying. This is what Oliver untied from her body night after night as he learned how to love her and what he passed to her time and time again to cover herself up as their conversation turned from the intimate to the serious. Of all the things Felicity wore on their trip, this one sheet of fabric is what he most associates with the summer they began to move forward as one rather than separate entities.

Next in the pile is a hoodie. Threadbare with numerous holes in it, Oliver recognizes it as his own. He doesn’t remember it being so worn out. It had been on its last legs the last time he saw it, for sure, but nothing like this.

“You left that here, when you moved out.”

Oliver turns once again at the sound of his wife’s voice and smiles at the sight of her, leaning against the doorway with a blanket in her hands. When they first moved into their house in Ivy Town, Oliver had questioned the number of blankets she bought but in the weeks that followed, he soon learned that is was rare to see her without one draped over her shoulders or clutched in her hands. The one she’s holding now is a deep green color, practically the same shade of his suit, and she’s almost absentmindedly rubbing the soft material against her cheek.

“It was nice, to have a piece of you still here. I wore that hoodie pretty much exclusively all summer. Especially after… I felt like I had lost the right to ask for your comfort but when another relative’s story appeared or another new report showed the destruction that… that I caused… it was nice to have that piece of you.”

Felicity’s voice is quiet as she walks across the room towards him, her words calculated and heavy despite her soft tone. The summer after Genesis Day was rough on them both and looking back, Oliver wishes that they hadn’t been at such a disconnect. Felicity had _needed _someone to lean on, the way that she has always been there for him to lean on, and he hadn’t been there.

“You know I would have come running if you’d given any indication that you needed or wanted me, right?” He tells her, looking up at her from where he’s sat on the floor. She gives him a soft, sad smile and sits down on the bed, still clutching the blanket tightly.

“You were dealing with enough that summer. You didn’t need me calling you every night to talk me through how to breathe.” She comments, a smirk on her face but Oliver immediately shakes his head as he pushes off the floor. He ignores the pain in his knee and sits on the bed as well, looking at her with a frown.

“Don’t say it as if it’s some menial or trivial thing. You know we treat trauma as the very real issue that it is, it’s your rule.” He reminds her and Felicity bites her lip, nodding her head.

“I know.” She says softly, nodding her head with a soft sigh. She reaches out and tugs gently at the arm of the hoodie that Oliver is still holding in his hands. “This… it was a lifeline for me that summer. I was so upset when it finally became more holes than fabric.”

“I’m glad, that if I couldn’t have been there for you, that a piece of me could.” He tells her, shifting his hand from the hoodie to where her own is clasping it. He’s gentle and slow as he does so, watching for any sign that contact is not what she wants right now. She doesn’t flinch and even shifts a little closer to him.

For a moment, they just sit there, their hands laced together.

Oliver can’t help but think about the person his wife was when he met her; bubbly, sweet, and fully faithful in the good of the world. She’s still all of those things but the journey they’ve been on, the things they’ve seen and experienced, it’s changed them all and Felicity is not exempt from that. The world is no longer black and white in any of their mindsets and that knowledge is an incredibly heavy load. The girl who wore that gold dress and had a bomb collar clasped around her neck is not the same one sat in front of him, she’s not even the woman who had needed his old hoodie as a lifeline last summer. This box… it’s a story of their path to each other but it’s also a story of the love of his life and how she came to be the woman before him.

The weight of Felicity’s chin resting on his shoulder tells him that she’s taken the time she needs after their conversation. Looking down at her, he smiles at the look in her eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve a woman like his wife looking at him with such intense love in her eyes but he wouldn’t change in for the world.

“So… we box that up and then we get Big Belly? Is that how this works?” She asks, smiling up at him and Oliver laughs, humming as he taps his forehead against hers playfully.

“I believe so.”

“Good, because that’s a deal I can get behind.” Felicity grins and Oliver chuckles, nodding his head. She nuzzles her head into his shoulder for a second before clearing her throat and standing. Oliver moves to place the hoodie in the box before he seals it, moving to help Felicity with the other clothes she wants to move.

The box sits in the bottom of their closet and moves with them where they go. They add to it when they remember to with Oliver’s old suits, the dress Felicity was wearing the night they conceive Mia, Mia’s adorable little baby bear onesie…

It becomes a time capsule, their story in a box, in the bottom of the closet.


End file.
